How It Falls
by Laryna6
Summary: The fate of the world is in his hands, and he has to make a choice. He's just glad he chose to hire the only person who understands what he's become. Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne 'crossover'
1. Omen

_Disclaimer: Capcom and Atlus own them, I do not._

_A crossover fic? But then, DMC is notorious for crossovers, isn't it? Viewtiful Joe, and Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne both contain Dante. _

_Theme: L is for Lakshmi, in the livejournal group alphabetasoup._

_- _

Ouch. _Ouch. _Half his macca. And he'd been saving up in case he found another soul selling demons here. The Pisaca was worth its weight in gold. Of course, he reflected, he always did have bad luck. And if he'd guessed heads he would have been able to hire Dante for only one macca!

"Bad luck, kid," Dante commiserated.

He really, really didn't want to give up the money. It had come from demons trying to kill him, most of it. But…

But Dante was a human and a demon, just like he had become.

His friends were going insane, giving up their humanity willingly, the manikins were grateful to him but he wasn't one of them as Futomimi had reminded him, his teacher was possessed, Hikawa was a mass murderer… that was why he'd been helping Hijiri, a perfect stranger, and even he was starting to seem a little off.

None of their reasons would make any world that justified the destruction of the old. Aradia talked about freedom and the Manikins about equality, but neither of them could create a reason, so that would mean things staying the way they were now. If only there was some way to put everything back the way it had been, but he was half-demon now, and from what he had managed to piece together probably wasn't able to create a reason. Not that he was very clear on how it all worked.

The only people who seemed to know were the old man and the woman, and they were doling out information as he earned his way through this labyrinth. They wanted him to help him, and right now it seemed like the best option he had.

He didn't want any more worlds destroyed. If he could help bring a stop to this…

Everyone was saying he was just drifting along, and he was, but he didn't want to make a decision until he had to, because he didn't dare make the wrong one with the fate of the world (worlds) at stake.

He needed to find out everything he could, and that was why he needed Dante. Here was someone who had been finding out more since they last met. He needed that information, every scrap he could find.

Here was one of the few 'humans' left alive. He wanted to have him nearby, like Hijiri, to remind him, to keep him safe. Not only that, Dante was a half demon, and he seemed very… forceful, secure, self-confident. He knew exactly who he was.

The Hitoshura, as everyone was calling him, had no idea. Someone who could teach him about what he had become was worth his weight in Chakra Drops, let alone macca. Especially since Dante could kill most demons in one hit: the Harlot had survived but taken an amazing amount of damage.

He reached into his pants pocket to pull out the money bag.

He really shouldn't have fused Lakshmi, goddess of wealth, into something else, he thought until Dante let him keep all the earnings and turned down his offer of a Chakra Drop to restore his magic, doing it on his own.

He'd been getting worried: as he went from one kalpa to the next the enemies grew harder and his allies ran out of magic faster, so far from a Lady of the Font to restore them, so he was using up Chakra Drops much too quickly.

Dante mowed demons down like there was no tomorrow (and maybe there wouldn't be), with some kind of attack that nothing was able to block: the Harlot called it Almighty and said she would work on remembering one that she could use.

He could also remove the spells enemies cast to make his group weaker with an item called a Holy Star.

Instead of having the Pisaca make them invisible to avoid being attacked, he had it make them more noticeable, since they were winning battles much more easily without using up Chakra Drops.

Maybe the goddess wasn't an omen after all. Or maybe the more powerful demon was a better one.

Dante wasn't afraid of any of this. He didn't have to be either.


	2. Free Will

_Disclaimer: Capcom and Atlus own them, not I. _

_Here's another 'crossover' fic with Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne (AKA Lucifer's Call), which Dante appears in. _

_Q is for Quetzalcoatl, a demon in the game. _

_A missing scene, because there are far too few cutscenes in order to allow the player to imagine their own Protagonist._

_- _

"You sure about this, 'Shura?" Dante asked him.

"I've come all this way." But he still hesitated to activate the lift that would take him all the way down, to become a true demon. He'd been refusing to commit this entire time, and now was the moment of truth.

Funny that all the courage he'd learned would desert him now.

"Remember what I told you about my father?"

"He saved the world you are from."

"He was a demon, through and through, and he always did what he thought was right. Changing won't change you: you'll still remember being a human, you'll still stay the same person. But what about the other yous?"

"What?"

"Oh come on, tell me you've figured this out. There are only a couple hundred demons, you just keep fighting different copies of them."

"Hey!" The restored Pixie said, crossing her arms and pouting.

"You're not exactly like the others, that's my point. You're you, Pixie. But there are a ton more pixies out there." He turned back to Shura, who had long since given up in getting rid of the nickname. He wasn't who he had been back when he'd had a normal name. "You and me? We can't be fused. We stay us. That's because we're part human. Once you're a demon? I'm guessing it won't stay that way."

"You mean Lucifer could make more of me, even if I found out he'd tricked me and decided not to help him anymore?"

"As strong as you are, it won't be easy to create more. But even my father had a copy: they call them Twins for really powerful demons where there are only a few of them. I've got one who was born along with me and we're as different as night and day. By going down there, you'll be creating a new, very powerful type of demon." Dante smiled slightly. "And you're a little young for fatherhood."

"So that's why they've all been waiting for me. I thought it was strange. I mean, I'm only one person." Even if he had just beaten God's most powerful servant.

"As a halfbreed, you are. As a full demon?" Dante shrugged. "I like being nearly unique. But, think of it this way. If you make the right choice going down there, than you're doing even more good than you thought. If you die, then your son can help stop all this world-destruction crap." A half-smile at the similarity to his own story.

"So I'm expendable after going down there."

"Kid, you were always expendable to him. That's why he tricked me into going after you, sent the other fiends too. That's how they work. Trial by combat: if you don't survive you're not the one they need anyway."

"I don't know if I want to be like that."

"You won't be. I've seen people get corrupted by demonic power, kid. If you had it in you, you'd have helped your friend kill those people."

"I'd be responsible for all of them."

"Think about the flying snake. One version of him, somewhere, is a god. The other versions we can take down without a sweat."

"So maybe I'd be able to make sure they aren't used to…" He didn't know. He thought going down there was the right thing to do. It was definitely the best option he had. But learning he couldn't change his mind later made it more serious.

"Want me to toss a coin?" Dante asked.

"I'll go." He walked onto the lift.

"Why?" Not are you sure? Just, you've thought this through all the way? You won't regret it later?

"If Lucifer hadn't given me the magatama, I would have been helpless to do anything. He's the one who gave me the power to choose. I'm not going to throw that away by leaving it to chance. The more powerful I become..." That sounded wrong, like he wanted power, like Chiaki.

"Without power, you can not protect anything," Dante said, and it sounded like a quote.

"I don't know if this is the right thing to do." He'd had to watch helplessly too much. He couldn't stop Chiaki, Isamu, Hikawa from killing right in front of him. "But I need to do it."

Dante smiled, and with his approval Shura felt he could do anything, even decide the fate of the world. "Good luck, kid. Here." He tossed him the coin.

Shura looked at it: one side was a woman with guns, and the other, "Hey! This thing's the same on both sides!"

"And the moral of the story is, screw chance: smart people make their own luck." Dante grinned. "You've got to take control of your own destiny."

Maybe that was worth all the money to learn.


	3. Homecoming

_Disclaimer: Capcom and Atlus own them, I don't._

_G is for Gaea, third in this oneshot series. _

_- _

He'd won. They'd beaten God, and now everything was better. No more worlds getting destroyed and recreated at someone's whim.

His had been the last one. He'd killed the first Kagatsuchi, but God had replaced it. He'd felt like an idiot after learning that he could have chosen to just restore the world in the first place without becoming a full demon, but everything had turned out for the best.

He'd made the right decision.

So here he was, home, on good old Earth instead of the Amala. Everything was back to the way it had been. Well, mostly. The Manikins remembered. Chiaki and Isamu didn't.

It was hard to act the same around them.

"Are you alright?" Strange to hear Futomimi's tone from such a different voice, the voice of the ghost in the labyrinth.

"I'm fine, Futomimi." He hadn't told Shura his old, human name. He'd wanted to stay the person he'd recreated himself as, not the killer he had been. It had been an uphill battle to get him not to turn himself in for the crimes he'd committed. Sakahagi's forgiveness had helped. "I just, I just don't feel like I fit in here anymore." Teachers weren't supposed to look at their students almost worshipfully: her goddess Aradia was real as well now.

"Those events greatly changed all of us."

Not just that.

He'd had to learn how to shapeshift (forget makeup, what about the horn?), he kept forgetting himself and crushing things like doorknobs… his parents thought it was him being a teenager, but they just didn't understand anything. Futomimi understood, though. He was a demon now as well, because he had let Shura use the Afterlife Bell on him.

"I thought I would do anything to be here again." He looked around at the park that Hikawa had once turned into a scene of carnage, unleashing demons on innocent people to get the power needed to destroy the world. "Now, I'm waiting for it to be over. Class was always boring, but now…"

"You want action."

Shura (he was catching himself thinking of himself as Shura now, Hitoshura if people were being formal) jumped. How did Dante manage to sneak up on him? He'd always been able to sense him a mile away, even as a demi-fiend.

"Relax, kid. It's just me and a few friends." Dante slung himself down into a chair, flanked by three people. "Guys, this is the kid. Shura, these are Trish, Nevan, and, last but not least, Vergil."

"You found him!" That was great!

Vergil nodded.

"Even after I killed Mundus he refused to tell me where he'd hidden him. So, I managed to convince Lucifer to loan me a few thousand flunkies to do the searching. It turned out he was hidden on Earth, my Earth. Last place we looked. That's why it's taken me so long to come check up on you."

"Oh." He'd started to wonder if he'd been forgotten. After all, Dante was from his own world, with his own problems.

"Mundus managed to gain a lot of ground while I was helping you out. I got him, though." A predatory grin that, strangely, looked perfectly human, not demonic.

"I was sure you would, Dante."

Dante blinked. "Futomimi?"

"In the flesh, as it were."

Dante laughed as the sun shone down on the park, the sound joining the construction noises as the workmen finished up the area that had been such a maze when the fairies lived there.

"I'm here too!" Pixie poked her head out of his pocket.

And suddenly Earth, the homeworld of what had once been his kind began to feel like home again.


End file.
